Introduction
It’s a dirty little trick from journalists to discuss the situation of Motorola at a Motorola phone review, but it’s inevitable. They aren’t performing too well; even LG wants to get ahead of the American manufacturer, thus taking them out definitively from the companies that produce the most phones.
Of course Motorola is fighting, they are probably announcing 50 new handsets this year, but until they arrive ones has to do something to maintain current sales. E8 seemed quite a good attempt, but it won’t be enough on its own until ZN5 arrives.
So there is the not-so-revolutionary low-end or mid-range, where the sales are quite high, but the profit per handset is rather low. If I’d have to sell a phone I would primarily concentrate on the design, then quality and finally on the features. W510 has the first, but it has problems with the other two properties.
We have received the handset from GSM Takács, the phone is locked to Vodafone, as they are currently running a promotion with it.
Exterior
The box is already full of ads, but we can still observe vast quantities of red color and although there are no live labels appearing we can still be sure that we will be using a “vodafonised” phone. The box has a charger, a USB cable and a headset in a package that looks like the silver plastic bags of preserved salamis. It has 6 textile pieces that can be applied on the headset’s earpiece.
W510 is no shocking piece of hardware. You look at it and instantly know that it’s a Motorola. The color is silver, the shape is clamshell and longish, the cover opens up only to some degree and there is the bump on the bottom that is so characteristic of the manufacturer. The front might be metal, at least it’s as cold to the touch, and it’s hanging loosely like 6-year old Johnny in the go-kart seat (‘cause he cried to his parents until they put him in, but he can’t even reach the gas). The back is completely plastic.
On the cover there is a small display inside a black frame. It’s colored and displays the most important information (time, signal strength, battery level, missed events), and it gets dark after being idle for a time and then there is only a very pale digital clock displayed. With the side buttons (on the left) we can set the volume and with the third key, that is situated a bit lower, we can change the profile even if the phone is closed. This button is used for the same thing also when the phone is open. The key on the right side is used for launching the voice recorder, so the camera has no dedicated button. The Motorola is flat on the bottom and the top, and it has a miniUSB connector in the bottom right. It’s great that there’s no operator logo on the phone.
After opening the phone we get to see a typical keypad, the layout is the usual, the browser has a dedicated key. The purple-white backlight is spectacular, but the pressure point is not perfect, this is an eternal problem of keyboards made of a single panel. The microSD card can be inserted after we take the back off, fortunately the battery doesn’t have to be taken out. I’d like to note that by the time I managed to put the microSD in, I could have even taken the battery out, as there is a really stupid method used: we don’t only have to push the card inside, but downwards too.
Menu, basic functions
Our dearest has Live, that’s life. Poor guy is not even too beautiful, although lately Vodafone can do all kinds of animated graphics too, but here we can see the old kind of red-white icon pack with absolutely zero customizability, we can only change the wallpaper on the standby screen and switch from icon view to list. That’s it.
There is not much extra in the contact list either, it displays SIM and internal memory together. This capacity is almost unlimited, as the address book can make use of the full storage space, after copying 249 contacts the software still displayed 0% memory use, even though there were a couple of photos too taking up space from the 15 MB internal memory. There can be lots of kinds of data assigned to the contacts: first-, last- and nickname, lots of phone numbers and email address, postal address, birthday, ringtone, image. This one is displayed in a small size in the contact list too, but only if we choose this kind of display mode.
There will be no surprises at messaging either, W510 is just like any other Motorola. We again have iTAP for text entry, MMS messages can have a max size of 300 KB, the limit for emails is 65 MB, but probably no one will make full use of this. The message editor is the same for MMS and SMS messages, our creation becomes a multimedia message as soon as we insert some multimedia content.
Organizer functions still lack a stopwatch, a countdown timer and a world clock; we still don’t know why does the American manufacturer keep forgetting these small, extremely simple applications. No complaints about the calendar, although there can be only one kind of entry, but the display us graphical in month and week view too. The alarm clock can store many time points and it alerts even when the handset is turned off. The calculator has basic functions and the voice recorder has a cool interface.
Multimedia
The 1.3 megapixel camera on the front is not the star of the year, that’s sure. It works in portrait mode, there is no autofocus or flash and there is a limited number of settings. We can set image size, quality, preset modes (automatic, daylight, interior, night mode, cloudy), white balance and camera sounds, which can be turned off. I can’t say much good about the images, let’s see them instead:
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There is a strange situation in music. There is a Java application hiding beneath the dedicated icon, it’s called Digital Audio Player, and although it can filter tracks by ID3 tags and supports playlists, but it cannot run in the background. If we access the file manager and play music from there than we get to see the factory default Motorola music player, which can run in the background without problems, but there are no special options. Still, we can redirect music playback to a stereo headset via Bluetooth in both programs.
Does it sound good? The music is surprisingly clear even in handsfree and this gets even better when using the headset, but it’s still far from a serious, dedicated musical phone. It’s a fact though that the handsfree mode during calls is exceptionally good, there can be some kind of powerful speaker in the bottom lump, as that’s where sound comes out. I have been missing an FM radio and a couple of normal games, as the nice presence of Live means that all applications are demo version.
Data transfer, battery
There’s no 3G, but we have GPRS and EDGE. The browser can theoretically display HTML pages too, but this is completely unnecessary, as in case of a more complex site it collapses and only says the user that the page is too large. So we can stick to WAP or we can install Opera Mini.
At local level we can use a standard USB cable to access the memory card even without special software, but if we would like to tamper with the internal contents of the phone we will need the software suite. This is what’s not included in the box and it cannot be downloaded from the manufacturer’s site. What can you do with it? You can buy it. Thanks, kisses and hugs.
The battery had a rather good performance, it kept the phone online for three days and when it gets low on power it still takes it for a night. I know as I have been listening to this half-asleep and I didn’t have the motivation to get up and turn it off.
Summary? This is the most typical Motorola phone in the world. Zero new features or special stuff, the design, the interior, the functions and the anomalies are all characteristic of the manufacturer. Currently it costs €80 EUR in this special promotion, but for this sum we have Sony Ericsson V640i and there are lots of differences. But we even have W300i, or even Samsung E250, which cost €20 EUR less… or there’s K800i for €8 EUR more, so Motorola won’t be a winner in this race…
Bog
Translated by Szaszati
Motorola W510 has been provided by GSM Takács. Thanks.
The handset can be purchase online at www.gsmtakacs.hu.
Specifications
| Motorola W510 | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM | |
| Size | 99 x 46 x 17.5 mm | |
| Weight | 107 grams | |
| Available colors | Silver | |
| Display | ||
| Internal display diagonal | 1.9” | |
| Internal display resolution | 176 x 220 pixels | |
| Internal display type | TFT | |
| External display resolution | 96 x 80 pixels | |
| External display type | CSTN | |
| Number of colors | 262.000 | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | dynamic | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | na / 300 KB | |
| Internal memory | 20 MB | |
| Memory expandability | microSD | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / Class 10 (236.8 kbps) | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | none / none | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | none / 2.0 (A2DP too) | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | 2.0 (miniUSB) | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | none / none | |
| GPS receiver | none | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | present | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in handsfree | present | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | present / none | |
| Sound recorder | present | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | iTAP | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | Motorola proprietary - Live | |
| WAP / HTML browser | 2.0 / present | |
| E-mail client | present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | demos | |
| Currency converter | none | |
| Extra software | Digital Audio Player | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 1.3 megapixels, fix focus | |
| Secondary camera | none | |
| Video recording | present (H.264 format, 176 x 144 pixels) | |
| Music player | present, can run in background | |
| Equalizer | none | |
| FM radio | none | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 880 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 350 hours | |
| Talk time | 7.5 hours | |
| Other | ||
| - | ||
